Classic Rock + Heavy Metal News | VH1

Every week Ed, Don and Jim welcome the biggest and best names in hard rock and heavy metal on That Metal Show, and we catch up with TMS’ shred-tastic musical guests in That Metal Gear. This week we caught up with one of the finest guitarist to emerge from the ’80s thrash metal scene, Alex Skolnick of Testament. As a player he combines technical finesses with raw power and combines classic and modern influences in both his playing and his gear selection. Read more…

Record Store Day will bring something extra special for metalheads and Metallica fans this year as the Holy Grail of all metal demos is set to be officially reissued for the first time since 1982. Recorded with their original lineup, which featured future Megadeth mastermind Dave Mustaine and bassist Ron McGovney, the No Life ’til Leather demo made the band’s reputation in underground heavy metal tape trading circles and laid the foundation for the thrash uprising to follow. On April 18th, it will see release once again as a special limited edition replica of the original cassette, before being reissued on vinyl and CD this summer as part of an ambitious reissue program.

In times past, heavy metal was often charged with being a “boy’s club” where women were not only unwelcome, but they wouldn’t want to be there in the first place what with all the music’s fire and blood and Satan and other stuff that’s supposed to make prissy girls say, “Yuck!”

What a load of hellacious hogwash. From the very earliest days of heavy metal, female vocalists and musicians have raised an unholy racket and propelled the form forward with beautifully brutal force.

That Metal Show is back and with it the TMS Top 5, where hosts Eddie Trunk, Don Jamieson and Jim Florentine argue about their favorite music picks. What’s different this year is TMS has been asking fans their top picks too! This week the boys weighed in with their favorite cover songs from hard rock and heavy metal‘s A-list. Read more…

The grave of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, the Pantera guitarist who was murdered on stage by a crazed concert goer, was vandalized a few days ago. An up-and-coming metal band named Nuclear Hellfrost was believed to be responsible, but the former lead singer of the band has since stepped up to apologize for the incident.

Kanye West posted a mysterious image on Twitter this weekend heralding his new album, So Help Me God. The internet quickly kicked into overdrive trying to understand the meaning behind the graphic, presumably the album cover for his latest project. But upon further research, it appears that the artwork was taken from a 2010 heavy metal album. Is it an homage, a rip off, or just an accident? You decide!

All season long Rock Icons director Sam Dunn will be giving us his personal epilogues for each episode. This week find out how a moment of inspired film making went wrong on the Vegas strip and how it reinforced just how cool metal god Rob Halford of Judas Priest truly is. Read more…

From the moment in the late 1960s when a British blues band called Earth renamed themselves after a Boris Karloff fright film—Black Sabbath, to be exact—heavy metal music has been profoundly intertwined with the medium of motion pictures.

Since then, no top-tier headbanger ensemble has tapped into that movie-metal connection more regularly, powerfully, or to more awesome effect than Iron Maiden.

This year on That Metal Show we’re doing things a little differently and thinking up exciting new ways to bring you the best coverage of all things heavy metal and hard rock. One of those things is That After Show, where we keep the cameras rolling after the regular broadcast is over and let the TMS boys and their guests talk about, well, whatever the f**k they want to talk about. This week hear Anthrax members Scott Ian, Charlie Benante and Frank Bello, and Testament shredder Alex Skolnick discuss their love of the band Kiss and more of their favorite music in the video above. Read more…

“Heavy” and “metal.” In a physical sense, those words apply quite literally to pinball machines and video games, but there’s also no denying the spiritual, maybe even cosmic connection between headbanging music, quarter-pumping classic arcade fun, and crashing on the couch in front of the latest home-gaming system with hard rock blasting and maybe some certain other kind of substance blazing.